triathloning, writing, living the dream

Fast?!

Today, I swam the fastest I’ve ever swum. Then, I had to lay in my car for 45 minutes until I could breathe right.

I haven’t swum in two weeks (remember, the whole break/sabbatical/doing whatever popped into my head thing), so I figured of course I’d be slow at practice today. Naturally, because swimming is stupid, I was faster than ever.

The whole practice I was swimming 1:16s easily, which is crazy. Anything under 1:20 is usually hard for me and it’s definitely not something I can do casually, repeatedly.

Whatever. Drafting, I figured.

Then, we got faster and faster with more and more rest as practice went on. And, suddenly, I was swimming 1:11s and 1:12s. I’ve never swum faster than that. Partially, I’ve only tried to swim faster than that a handful of times; partially, I’m not that fast; and partially, I can swim 1:20s for a long, long time but I can’t swim faster than that for shit.

Finally, we got to the end of practice, where we were going to take turns swimming an all-out 100y. I just thought it would be awesome if I could finally break 1:10. I swam so, so hard.

1:07!!!

Where the fuck did that come from?

I felt fine right after swimming, just breathing really hard. Then, after a couple minutes, we were supposed to swim another hard 50y. I started out, but I just couldn’t catch my breath. My heart started beating so hard and so fast. I could feel it everywhere and it wouldn’t slow down and it was pulsing through my whole body. Basically, I couldn’t breathe enough and when I wasn’t breathing my heart hurt. I slowed down, finished up the 50y, took a break and figured I’d just cool down nice and easy.

But, even swimming easy, I couldn’t catch my breath. When I wasn’t breathing, my heart was just going too fast still and so hard. I backstroked, figured it would stop eventually.

It didn’t stop.

Even 20 minutes after finishing swimming, in the locker room, my heart was still beating so, so fast and so, so hard. It felt like it might jump out of my chest or explode. Or, more logically, I might pass out. I also felt like as long as I kept breathing slow and not doing anything it would go away in a minute or two, but it kept not going away. I had to sit down in the car and call Steve and once I started talking that was too much talking and not enough breathing. My heart started beating so fast again and I laid down in the back seat for like 30 more minutes.

The whole heart rate thing is so strange. It makes me wonder if there is some connection to the old blood pressure drop/pass out thing you used to have trouble with. Didn’t the doctors say that was some sort of “wrong” signal from heart rate that told the brain to drop the blood pressure? The whole thing freaks me out.